AgenPress – The fate of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end it to the long and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas . But a senior Hamas official told CNN that “no one has any idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Hamas spokesman and political bureau member Osama Hamdan offered an overview of the militant group’s position on the Ceasefire talks stall a view on Hamas’s regret over its decision to attack Israel given the growing number of Palestinian casualties, and a commentary on the situation the leak of messages earlier this week from its head in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, l man believed to be the final decision maker on any peace agreement.
The United States believes Hamas holds the key to the talks. “The bargaining must stop,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC on Thursday, urging Sinwar to end the war. “It’s relatively safe underground; the people he claims to represent suffer every day.”
Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – does not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.
Hamdan, who was part of the Hamas negotiating team on the ground, said the group needs “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians determine for themselves only their future, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege… and we are ready to talk about a fair agreement on the exchange of prisoners.”
Negotiations over the US-backed proposal have intensified in recent days, but appeared to have stalled on Wednesday after Hamas submitted its response to the document, 12 days after first receiving it.
The US-backed ceasefire plan approved by the United Nations Security Council on Monday calls for a phased approach. In the first phase there would be a six-week ceasefire during which some hostages would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and the Israeli army would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza. The second phase – a permanent end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza – would be implemented only after further negotiations between the two sides.
But Hamdan said the duration of the ceasefire is a key issue for Hamas, which fears Israel has no intention of completing the second phase of the agreement. The end of hostilities must be permanent, he said, and Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza.
“The Israelis only want the ceasefire for six weeks and then they want to go back to fighting, which I think the Americans, so far, have failed to convince the Israelis to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said , adding that he believes the United States must convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.
